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One early morning the other week, I was in the office sorting out evaluation forms from six of the digital skills courses our team had delivered over the last few days. Responses to ‘How would you rate X as a facilitator?’, ‘Did the course meet its objectives?’, ‘What three things will you take away from the…

After a little blip last year, I’m really pleased that we’re able to bring our series of advent tips for smart digital communicators back for 2013. Helpful Technology was a freelance business when I first started the tips, but now we’ve grown to a gargantuan four people, so this year there are tips coming up…

If GOV.UK is delivering the website, what’s the purpose of digital communications teams in government departments? That’s one of the interesting issues tackled by the Cabinet Office’s Digital Communication Capability Review, whose draft report is online for public comment for another couple of days. It’s a fine piece of work, led by some creative thinkers…

I’ve always suspected there’s a damn sight less success around than people claim, and a damn sight more dumb luck and hidden failure brushed under the carpet. There’s a lovely piece by John Coventry on failure over on Wonkcomms today that really struck a chord with me: I’ve always thought that being on the frontline of communicating the work…

Our clients do some jolly interesting things online. Of course, I would say that, but they really do: everything from podcasting about alternatives to Trident to fighting dodgy landlords, arguing for involving the public in deciding how to deal with Syria to arguing the case for reorganising A&E departments. Like a lot of digital agencies,…

I’ve been a bit grumpy lately that use of digital tools to engage the public creatively around policy consultations has stalled. Sure, there’s some good tweeting, and some creative ministerial webchats, but not much that tackles the showstopping barriers of impenetrable language, lengthy response forms and boring or loaded questions. What BIS has done with…

These days, everyone wants to be ‘agile’. At root, it’s a project management discipline that fixes cost and quality, rather than scope – so you never face unexpected surprises at the end of a project (but may not end up with what you originally thought you wanted). That’s normally a good thing: after all, no battle…

It’s silly season, so here’s my contribution. A few months ago, my mouse hand slipped and I found myself the owner of one of Berg’s Little Printers, a small thermal printer which prints on receipt paper and connects to the internet. It delivers ‘publications’ like the weather forecast, a crossword puzzle, or a quote of…

To those of you who don’t regularly wrangle small children on a regular basis: look away now: this won’t make a great deal of sense, I’m afraid. The rest of you – hopefully, like me, you will have had your knowledge of the marine world vastly expanded by compulsive watching of The Octonauts, a sort…

Lots of people have views on the ‘right’ way to use Twitter as an organisation. I’m pretty liberal about it: I think it’s fine to use it to pump out press releases from a corporate account if that’s the expectation you set, or to have a dormant, verified account there ready for a crisis, or…